1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method for making an improved sheeted snack food and, more particularly, to a method for making a multi-grain sheeted snack food having visual inclusions comprising buckwheat hulls.
2. Description of Related Art
Sheeted snack foods, such as fabricated potato chips and corn chips, are popular consumer items for which there exists a great demand. When making a sheeted snack food, first a starch-based dough is sheeted, it is next cut into pieces of a desired shape, and then cooked. Often the desired snack piece shape is that of a square, triangle, or circle. After the dough is cut into pieces, the pieces are cooked (by for example frying, baking, or both) which reduces their moisture content. The snack pieces are seasoned and then sent to be packaged.
A sheeter is a device commonly used in the food industry for making such flattened or sheeted food products (tortilla chips and fabricated potato chips, for example) in a continuous processing operation. Typically, a dough product is compressed between a pair of counter rotating sheeter rollers that are located closely together, thereby providing a pinch point through which the dough is formed into sheets. The dough can then be cut by, for example, a cutting roller to form the shape of the product desired.
Many dough products, particularly those that are corn based (“masa”), have a tendency to stick to the sheeter rollers rather than dropping onto a conveyer for transportation to the next processing step, such as a baking oven. One common approach to this problem is to string a stripper wire across the face of the sheeter roller so that the stripper wire can scrap away the dough product off of the surface of the roller. Solutions such as this are discussed in detail in U.S. Pat. No. 6,268,005 which issued on Jul. 31, 2001, and is entitled “Sheeter Wire Apparatus.” A scraper blade can also be used to remove dough from the surface of the rollers.
In recent years, consumer demand has been dramatically increasing for healthy foods in general, and healthy snack foods in particular. Nutritious snacks should ideally meet several criteria that include limits on the amount of fat, including saturated and trans-fatty acids, cholesterol, sodium, and added sugar.
The popularity of whole grain snacks has been increasing, partly as the result of the USDA recommendation that one-half of all grains that are eaten be whole grains. Whole grains are defined as containing the entire grain kernel (bran, germ, and endosperm) and can include corn, brown rice, bulgur, oatmeal, barley, rye, and buckwheat. A typical indicator to the consumer that a product contains whole grains is visible particles of bran in the product. It would be beneficial if whole grains could be included in snack products, with the whole grain being visible to the consumer, thus giving the consumer a visual confirmation that the product contains beneficial whole grains.
It is difficult, however, to make whole grain snacks using conventional dough sheeting, because the bran or pericarp will accumulate on the sheeter wire or scraper blade, resulting in inconsistent removal of the dough from the rollers. Also, large pieces of bran or pericarp can be reduced in size by the physical forces encountered during the sheeting process. This reduction in size reduces the final visibility of the bran pieces.
Buckwheat has gained an excellent reputation for its nutritious qualities in the human diet. Most of the buckwheat utilized for humans is marketed in the form of flour for which the primary end use is pancake mixes. Some of the buckwheat flour used in prior art buckwheat food products is whole grain and contains hulls, but these hull particles are not easily discernable as individual particles of the buckwheat hull. This is because approximately 99% of buckwheat flour (including hulls) will pass through a #60 U.S. standard sieve. Yet, consumer studies show that consumers are more likely to identify a product as having a whole grain content if the whole grain ingredients are visually apparent.
It would be beneficial to have a whole grain buckwheat-containing sheeted snack where buckwheat hull particles are visible in the final product such that consumers can tell that whole grain buckwheat is present, but that does not result in excessive accumulation of the dough on the sheeting wire or scraper blade.
Consequently, the need exists for a nutritious snack chip having a high content of whole grains with an appearance that indicates that the whole grains are present and that is made from a dough that is readily sheetable on existing snack food sheeters. Such product should ideally have whole grain components that are easily identified as such by the consumer.